Camping Les Ilons

There are some really rather lovely villages to poke around in nearby – visit the 12th-century fortress in Rochemaure, 15 minutes away, explore the Roman ruins at Alba-la-Romaine, half an hour away or take a 45-minute drive to Vogüé to see a gorgeous medieval village on a cliff overlooking the Ardèche river. A village of a different kind is the collection of troglodyte dwellings at Balmes de Montbrun, 45 minutes away by car. Park up and take a walk of an hour or so to get to the basalt cliffs to see the remnants of a castle, a chapel and several homes. For more splendid geological features, it’ll take you an hour or so to get to the Monts d’Ardèche Regional Natural Park (armed with your boots or a mountain bike if you’d like to hit the forest trails) or the Gorges de l’Ardèche, where you can canoe through the Pont-d’Arc stone arch or visit the Aven d’Orgnac cave. If you’re partial to a chunk (or several) of nougat, you’ll do rather well in Montélimar – it’ll take you 20 minutes to get there in the car and you can spend most of a day flitting from shop to shop to sample all the sweets, as well as visiting the museum dedicated to sweets (and especially local fave nougat). To avoid a complete sugar rush, perhaps intersperse your nibbles with visits to the two contemporary art museums, the toy museum or the European Fighter Aircraft Museum.